Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

[sojourner]

I knew someone would try to adapt the NASA warp drive to the Star Trek Enterprise...

http://psidonia.blogspot.com/2011/06/this-is-quick-and-dirty-3d-sketch-of.html

But I think the warp-field would not extend far beyond the warp ring. So the entire ship's saucer-section would be destroyed (in the space-time compression zone), when the warp drive is engaged.

Actually, that's just someone doing a sketch of a generic ring warp drive attached to an Enterprise-ish ship. From reading the article I don't think they intended it to be based off of the NASA research.

Ring based warp drives are a lot older in fiction than NASA's research. Heck, some of Matt Jefferies original sketchs for the TOS Enterprise had rings.

 

[Psion]

I knew someone would try to adapt the NASA warp drive to the Star Trek Enterprise...

http://psidonia.blogspot.com/2011/06/this-is-quick-and-dirty-3d-sketch-of.html

But I think the warp-field would not extend far beyond the warp ring. So the entire ship's saucer-section would be destroyed (in the space-time compression zone), when the warp drive is engaged.

Actually, that's just someone doing a sketch of a generic ring warp drive attached to an Enterprise-ish ship. Grom reading the article I don't think they intended it to be based off of the NASA research.

Ring based warp drives are a lot older in fiction than NASA's research. Heck, some of Matt Jefferies original sketchs for the TOS Enterprise had rings.

Sorry, Sojourner, I'm not laughing at you ... I'm hugely amused that this discussion wound up here!

Larryman, that was the beginning of a speculative project that started on these boards in the Trek Art forum. I invite you to look over the discussion here. It's another on top of a huge pile of unfinished projects I keep meaning to get back to.

 

[sojourner]

Yeah, I thought the art looked familiar. Didn't make the connection to your thread though, lol.

 

[larryman]

I knew someone would try to adapt the NASA warp drive to the Star Trek Enterprise...

http://psidonia.blogspot.com/2011/06/this-is-quick-and-dirty-3d-sketch-of.html

But I think the warp-field would not extend far beyond the warp ring. So the entire ship's saucer-section would be destroyed (in the space-time compression zone), when the warp drive is engaged.

Actually, that's just someone doing a sketch of a generic ring warp drive attached to an Enterprise-ish ship. Grom reading the article I don't think they intended it to be based off of the NASA research.

Ring based warp drives are a lot older in fiction than NASA's research. Heck, some of Matt Jefferies original sketchs for the TOS Enterprise had rings.

Sorry, Sojourner, I'm not laughing at you ... I'm hugely amused that this discussion wound up here!

Larryman, that was the beginning of a speculative project that started on these boards in the Trek Art forum. I invite you to look over the discussion here. It's another on top of a huge pile of unfinished projects I keep meaning to get back to.

LOL... that's a funny occurrence. I got the link to that page from another board, which did not give background details.

I just browsed the thread link you provided. Don't see any mentions of the Enterprise physically exceeding the ring's field, as I mentioned. Refer to 1st image posted in this thread. The warp field is 'tight' to the leading and trailing ends of the warp ring. No length (in direction of ring movement) to accommodate the 'lengthy' Enterprise.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Our scientists may delve into warp drive theory but it will never become a reality. Humanity's progress is still hindered by politics, religion and the mother of all f***k ups greed (money).

Those things are not going to prevent warp drive from becoming a reality.

Science itself very well might, though.

 

[Psion]

Actually, that's just someone doing a sketch of a generic ring warp drive attached to an Enterprise-ish ship. Grom reading the article I don't think they intended it to be based off of the NASA research.

Ring based warp drives are a lot older in fiction than NASA's research. Heck, some of Matt Jefferies original sketchs for the TOS Enterprise had rings.

Sorry, Sojourner, I'm not laughing at you ... I'm hugely amused that this discussion wound up here!

Larryman, that was the beginning of a speculative project that started on these boards in the Trek Art forum. I invite you to look over the discussion here. It's another on top of a huge pile of unfinished projects I keep meaning to get back to.

LOL... that's a funny occurrence. I got the link to that page from another board, which did not give background details.

I just browsed the thread link you provided. Don't see any mentions of the Enterprise physically exceeding the ring's field, as I mentioned. Refer to 1st image posted in this thread. The warp field is 'tight' to the leading and trailing ends of the warp ring. No length (in direction of ring movement) to accommodate the 'lengthy' Enterprise.

Well, in fairness to the intent, it was based on the "ringship" concept by Matt Jefferies as used for a Roddenberry pilot that never went anywhere and ultimately got re-used as set dressing for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, not on a paper that hadn't yet been published. If we're going to judge it by scientific concepts that didn't exist at the time, then I'll double-down and insist that this design relies on a longitudinally-asymmetrical warp field that will be discussed in a paper to be published in 2021.

Of course, you make a good point about trying to design to current scientific understanding. In this case, a longer ring to include the primary hull might work. Or two rings -- one ahead of the ship and one behind. But those sound like they'd lack grace. If we're already speculating about the mere existence of an FTL starship, why not borrow ideas from current science and extrapolate to something futuristic that serves the needs of the story and looks nice?

 

[Deckerd]

Our scientists may delve into warp drive theory but it will never become a reality. Humanity's progress is still hindered by politics, religion and the mother of all f***k ups greed (money).

Those things are not going to prevent warp drive from becoming a reality.

Science itself very well might, though.

But they'll keep tinkering around and might just come up with something else.

 

[throwback]

Two thousand years ago, a writer envisioned a trip to the Moon. In his time, people thought such a trip impossible and it would be improbable that humans would ever have the technology to do the trip. I think it's premature to say whether or not we can travel to the nearest stars. It may be that in another two thousand years that humans may have traveled to the nearest stars.

I think that space travel to the nearest stars may be a series of leaps, like what the Polynesians did when exploring the Pacific. They would travel to one island, settle that island, and travel to another island. I see humans doing that in space.

One of the reasons I am hopeful is that humans do have a tendency to be slow to move into other areas. It took tens of thousands of years for our species to move out of Africa into the Sinai peninsula, and eventually to the rest of the world.

I am doubtful that humans may colonize as much space as was shown in Star Trek or Doctor Who, where humans have spread out into systems that are thousands of light years of Earth. I think that it is more likely that humans will stay pretty close to the home system.

The benefit of the discoveries we are now witnessing in astronomy is that we are building a list of probable systems that humans could travel to and colonize. And, now with the discovery of a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, I think it's possible to say that there might be other planets in the system. So, when we do get there, humans may find a world to colonize. So, I think it possible that in one way, Star Trek might be prophetic - in "Return to Tomorrow", Captain Kirk said that humans went to the moon, went to Mars, and went to Alpha Centauri. I can see that progression happening within the next two thousand years.

 

[Deckerd]

I really don't think you appreciate the distances involved.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Well, "within the next two thousand years" is broad enough that I can't say throwback is wrong.

 

[Deckerd]

I really don't think time is the problem as far as human ingenuity is concerned. In the long run, if they want to travel to another star, they will work out how to get humans to survive hundreds of years in the void. This is intellectually easy but realistically has so many problems embedded in it that in two thousand years I expect we will be just as stuck in this solar system as we are now. By that time, we will be on other planets, though.

 

[larryman]

I don't think you can stretch the ring into a cylinder shape. They seem to have gained great functionality by making the ring a "rounded donut" shape. Stretching it would probably return it to requiring 'planet Jupiter mass' energy requirements. I would think that multiple donut rings in series would also.

I think best to just use the saucer-section. Scaled to the max diameter of the football (in proportion to the warp ring), and mount it on a pivot axis to the ring. Then, with the saucer perpendicular to the ring... it's impulse engines can be used to achieve initial sub-light velocity. Then pivot the saucer to parallel with the ring, and engage the warp drive. When slowing to stop... do the reverse procedure.

 

[Deckerd]

I love the way this thread is half Trek tech and half realism without any friction between the two.

 

[John Mason]

Maybe the Zero point energy field is sub space. If so would quantum entanglement aid in sub space communication?

 

[sojourner]

I don't think you can stretch the ring into a cylinder shape. They seem to have gained great functionality by making the ring a "rounded donut" shape. Stretching it would probably return it to requiring 'planet Jupiter mass' energy requirements. I would think that multiple donut rings in series would also.

I think best to just use the saucer-section. Scaled to the max diameter of the football (in proportion to the warp ring), and mount it on a pivot axis to the ring. Then, with the saucer perpendicular to the ring... it's impulse engines can be used to achieve initial sub-light velocity. Then pivot the saucer to parallel with the ring, and engage the warp drive. When slowing to stop... do the reverse procedure.

A. Why pivot it at all?
B. Why use a saucer shape to begin with?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Maybe the Zero point energy field is sub space. If so would quantum entanglement aid in sub space communication?

To me, this is tantamount to asking whether we can power spaceships with unicorns and pixie dust.

"Zero point energy" - Not known to exist or be possible.
"Sub space" - Not known to exist.
"Quantum entanglement" - Exists but we don't fully understand its implications.
"Sub space communication" - Like "sub space," this is not known to exist or be possible.

It is hard to speculate how well some imaginary technique would work at some task without at least a little concrete science to back it up.

 

[publiusr]

What do you know about this?
http://redshift.vif.com/BookBlurbs/PushingGravity.htm
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthr...pected-ULF-ELF-signals-quot-real-or-imaginary

Woo-woo or not?

Now a ringship cannot have a long stem out front--I don't thing the geometry allos for that.

So a Warp ship will look like a very simple ringed space station, with the outer ring perhaps doubling for a crew compartment once the exotic matter is removed?

 

[sojourner]

Why would you remove the exotic matter?

 

[John Mason]

would it be possible to warp the space within a wormhole?

 

[The Castellan]

I really don't think you appreciate the distances involved.

I am going to say this once, since all this will get is either tinfoil hat jokes or cheesy pictures with infantile captions for some cheap lol factor.

I am a paranormal investigator, I have witnessed many amazing objects in the sky that the conventional explanations can not satisfy (in fact a good 5 to 10 percent of the UFO's in the many released documents from many countries, except America, as usual , which is a large amount in the tens of thousands of cases when you think about it), and with the discovery of more and more stars with planet around them, as well as the fact that our own solar system is very much brand new, those other worlds can have civilizations out there millions, if not billions of years ahead of us, making our state of the art technology look like prehistoric junk. And what's not to say that faster than light interstellar travel is not possible? Just because we can't do it, does not mean another species out there can't. That's like the height of human arrogance right there, that we, supposedly, are the highest, most intelligent forms of life out there. Those objects reported, and many I have seen myself, are moving in ways already breaking physics as we know it, and I could see them covering vast distances like we would be hoping in a car or jet and going to another state or county. And science is about more learning, and the willingness to throw away what was once considered the answer with a new one, and being open minded to these things, without acting like some spoiled brat or arrogant prick.......or saying whatever the guy paying them wants.....since, unfortunately, politics and money follows science on its coattails anywhere it goes. This is my own hunch, but I think both faster than light travel and discovering alien life will devastate a good chunk of mainstream scientists because that would mean what they were preaching would be wrong and the guys they views as "The gods of science, and don't mess with them!" would actually become just normal guys again. And they themselves would no longer be considered top masters of nature. Hell, it's even mentioned in Brookings that scientists and engineers would be the ones to really freak out....and given the egos and arrogance, which is probably higher than those of rock stars and pro athletes, I can easily see that.

Heck, just a few centuries ago, this was considered the mainstream, "true" ways of thinking, including science:
1: The Earth is flat.
2: Man can not fly.
3: Man can not go faster than sound.
4: Man will never reach the moon.

Tack on "We are alone in the universe" and "We can not move faster than light" to that list.

Studying history, I often find three stages in any sort of major change, be in science or political, that happen.
1: Denial
2: Aggressive hostility towards it
3: Acceptance

And talking to some of my friends in the Hopi and Zuni communities, as well as in India, it's only a matter of time before interesting things begin to happen.



I'm done, now, since I am sure I gave some of you some amusement and material for your cheesy caption pictures.